Important Elements of Fitness Training
1. Breathing Exercises
Breathing is a crucial factor that determines the amount of oxygen taken by your body. This in turn has a great impact on your overall health. Poor breathing techniques can hamper your health and are known to aggravate existing ailments. Every exercise in your fitness training should have a proper breathing technique at its core. It ensures increased efficiency of lungs and proper blood supply throughout the body.
Recommended Activities: Yoga includes plenty of breathing exercises that not only teach you the correct breathing technique, but also increase your breathing volume. The Pranayama which is the basic breathing technique of inhaling and exhaling air with complete concentration and focus is the best way to increase the strength of the lungs, and improve blood circulation. Aerobic exercises also help in improvement of the breathing volume of the lungs. One can also try aerobic activities like running, jogging, biking, swimming, dancing, or even water aerobics.
2. Muscle Fitness
Muscular fitness is an important aspect of fitness training. It helps increase the lean muscle mass, burn calorie, and lose body fat easily. Another important aspect is, strengthening your core muscles which include muscles of your abdomen, lower back, and pelvis. The core muscles support, balance, and stabilize the body, and hence their strength is a vital element of any fitness training. It includes resistance training in which you need to gradually overload your muscles so that they strengthen to meet the challenges. Free weight and calisthenics are both included in the resistance training. Calisthenics includes push ups, sit ups, and chin ups.
Recommended Activities: Weight training is most commonly used when trying to achieve muscular strength. During a weight-training program it is best to start with lower weights and then gradually move on to the next level when you are ready. Many yoga asanas that involve balancing your own body weight are especially helpful for building muscles.
3. Flexibility
Stretching exercises are important in increasing the flexibility of the body. It increases the range of motion of the joints and eases muscle tension. Muscles of the arms, back, hips, thighs, and calves can become flexible only with the help of an all-round fitness training program. It provides better movement of joints, better body posture, and enhanced blood circulation.
Recommended Activities: Regular stretching before and after a workout helps tremendously in increasing one’s flexibility. The activities that one can try are yoga, tai chi, or even a fun activity like dancing. While stretching your muscles make sure to try to exceed your previous flexing capabilities. Always remember to perform every movement slowly without jerks, and ensure proper breathing at every step.
4. Emotional Health
Emotional health is also an important part of physical fitness, and both these elements go hand in hand. It can be defined as the state of emotional well-being, where the mind is capable of staying away from negative thoughts and focuses on creative and constructive tasks. Fitness training also enhances the hand-eye coordination and improves the reflexes. An ideal fitness-training program leads to the development of an aware and alert mind. Exercise or any rigorous physical activity like aerobics or kick boxing stimulates the production of endorphins, which are the chemical substances that make you feel happy. Having sound emotional health is hence a vital element of the fitness training process.
Recommended Activities: Almost all the exercises and aerobic physical activities are good for emotional health. Yoga, aerobics, running, jogging, kick boxing, tai chi, are some of the invigorating activities that can help you in attaining emotional fitness. Yoga is especially useful since it also focuses on meditation techniques and helps in strengthening the human mind.
